Citic Buying CLSA Gives China Most Autonomous Asia Broker

Andy Rothman, a former American diplomat who now runs China macro-strategy at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, had a blunt message for the broker’s clients in May 2011: The Communist Party’s control of finance companies leads to “high-frequency interference.”

Now, about a year later, CLSA is on its way to being acquired by Citic Securities Co., part of a state-controlled investment group that ultimately answers to that party. On July 20, Beijing-based Citic said it had bought a 19.9 percent stake in CLSA and planned to purchase the remaining shares by mid-2013 for a total of $1.25 billion.